GRADUATE STUDENT CONFERENCE
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA, PHILADELPHIA, PA
CONFERENCE DATE: APRIL 2nd 2011

This conference is open to different ways of constructing nature — material, representational, or metaphysical. Papers may be from any academic discipline or approach, and all papers relating to things found in nature, broadly construed, are welcome, including criticisms of how the boundaries of “nature” are constructed. Papers may consider, for example, rain in Arabic or Persian poetry, real and imaginary creatures, ingredients in alchemy and medicine, metallurgy, paper-making, medieval or modern dietary restrictions, slaughter, markets, fountains and the use of water in human environments, medieval philosophers on nature, cleanliness and pollution, representations of natural space, the economic history of agriculture or mining, physical geography, the political economy of oil, desertification, etc.

Discussants and Chairs will be provided to panels by the organizing committee. A limited number of travel awards will be made available to conference participants.

Paper abstracts, no longer than 250 words, should be submitted by January 15, 2011.

Papers should be no more than 9,000
words and will be pre-circulated.

Abstracts should be submitted digitally
(.doc or .pdf) to mecgradconf2011@gmail.com

Further inquiries can be directed to MEC Program Assistant, James Ryan, at jamryan@sas.upenn.edu